The baby decision — how to decide when you can't decide

All In The Mind

ABC listen

Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Science

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are some decisions in life that can be trickier to navigate. Do you want to get married? Should you change careers? Do you want a baby?

Parenthood is a choice more vexed than ever in a world threatened by climate change, political instability and cost-of-living crises.

So how can people approach this choice? And if you're lucky enough to have a choice, how do you make peace with your decision?

Decision coach Merle Bombardieri has been working with couples on this very topic for decades — today, we ask her about the tools, tips and strategies you can use to tackle the baby question.

If you're interested in hearing more about parenthood, check out our episode called Why do we sing to babies?

Transcript

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0:00.0	ABC Listen, Podcasts, Radio, News, Music, and more.
0:07.2	So the year is 1970.
0:10.0	Merle Bombardieri is a 21-year-old university student.
0:13.6	She's majoring in psychology, and she's got this boyfriend, this guy called Rocco,
0:18.0	who's a PhD student in zoology.
0:21.0	And one day, Rocco proposes to her.
0:24.4	I was deeply in love with him.
0:26.7	I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, and I knew that.
0:30.2	But Merle does something almost unthinkable for women who were in love back then.
0:35.2	She says, no.
0:37.3	He knew that he wanted to have children, not just a child, but children.
0:41.6	And I thought that I wanted to be child free.
0:44.0	Right.
0:44.7	So I said no.
0:46.7	And my husband assumed that because I loved him and because I was a woman at some point in our relationship,
0:53.3	I would just automatically wake up and say, yes, I'm ready to have a baby.
0:56.7	But I said, there are no guarantees of that at all.
1:00.3	Yeah.
1:00.7	And I would not only deprive you of a child, and I certainly don't think it would be good for us to have a child I don't want.
1:06.8	So the answer has to be no, until or unless, we can get a different view on this.
1:12.9	What did your family or friends think?
1:15.7	Like, was that pretty radical to say no because I don't know if I want kids?
	...

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